The documentary shows how not only prominent American conservative evangelicals like Scott Lively and Lou Engle but many missionaries and organizations like the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer

have done a great job convincing Ugandan parents that homosexuals are out to get their children. This “recruiting” notion is as old as time and should have been discredited by now, but it seems to work particularly well in a culture that has not had much experience with sexual minorities. Of course, the irony is that it’s the radical evangelicals who are doing the recruiting here, literally whispering their lifestyle into the ears of kids—as a poignant scene at the funeral of slain activist David Kato shows, actual LGBTQ people are struggling just to stay alive.

Journalist and historian Susan Jacoby talks with Bill about the role secularism and intellectual curiosity have played throughout America’s history, a topic explored in her new book, The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought.

“I’m sure there are plenty of atheists and various kinds of unorthodox religious people in Congress, but they don’t talk about it,” Jacoby tells Bill. “I think that either proclaiming allegiance to a religion or shutting up about it is still an absolute requirement.”

Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin have all flirted with Christian Right Dominionism, but there's lots of misinformation about just what that means.

Dominionists want to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States, a concept that was dismissed as eroding freedom and democracy by the founders of our country. Dominionism has become a major influence on the right-wing populist Tea Parties as Christian Right activists have flooded into the movement at the grassroots.

Chip Berlet has an informative article on Talk2Action.com about Dominionism. (It's also on Daily Kos.) Arguably, Dominionism is an academic term insofar as not all Dominionists and perhaps the vast majority of those the Christian Right who have been influenced by Dominionism do not use the term themselves. As summarized on the Wikipedia entry for Dominionism:

In 2005, Clarkson enumerated the following characteristics shared by all forms of dominionism:[21]

1. Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.2. Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.3. Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or "biblical law," should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles.[21]

The term soft dominionism is applied by critics to various Christian Right social and political movements that claim that "America is a Christian nation". Soft Dominionists also disclaim the existence of the "wall of separation" between church and state. In her book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, Michelle Goldberg called this tendency "Christian Nationalism".[22] [Chip] Berlet and [Frederick] Clarkson have agreed that "[s]oft Dominionists are Christian nationalists."[64]

The New York Times embarked on the project “Coming Out” as an effort to better understand this generation’s realities and expectations, and to give teenagers their own voice in the conversation.

The Times spoke with or e-mailed nearly 100 gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender teenagers from all of parts of the country — from rural areas to urban centers, from supportive environments to hostile ones..........In the face of competing messages, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths just want to be teenagers. While they envision a world where they can get married and have doors open to them, they do not want to be defined by their sexuality, regardless of how they are received by their community. It is just one part of their identity.

As Kailey Jeanne Cox, 15, said in her story: “I don’t want to have myself being seen by people as ‘Oh, she’s — she’s gay.’ I want them to see me as ‘Wow, she loves God, who cares what kind of people she likes? She is a Christian, she leads by example and she’s a wonderful person.’ That’s what I want people to think when they see me.”

When David Barton and Jon Stewart begin discussing the Treaty of Tripoli (11:30 into the interview), Barton maintains that it simply demonstrates that the US isn’t an anti-Muslim nation like Tripoli’s European enemies. But Article 11 of the treaty clearly states that the US isn’t an anti-Muslim nation because “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Here is the full text of Article 11:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Right Wing Watch (a project of People For the American Way (PFAW)) has been doing a great job exposing the intellectual dishonesty of Christianist propogandist and historical revisionist David Barton through their series of fact-checking posts relating to Barton's appearance on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.

the influence of Christian conservatives remains substantial and that they are rallying around the idea of "American exceptionalism" to press their political agenda and have lots of Republican presidential hopefuls to choose from.

Of all possible sources, the mainstream media often produces the most belated of coverage on the Religious Right. When Newsweek writes about American exceptionalism, you can bet that others have been writing about it for months if not years earlier and probably more carefully.

Consider the coverage of the term "American exceptionalism." It's been identified with the Religious Right recently in the mainstream media. But, the media doesn't always explore well the fact that the Religious Right's version of American exceptionalism is not necessarily one informed about what the term "American exceptionalism" itself has meant throughout the nation's history. It's not a brand new concept. But, it's meaning changes--it's slipperly. This is an important part of the untold story, because it reveals how the Religious Right is claiming the notion of American exceptionalism as its own by stressing the theological characteristics of American exceptionalism, which does not necessarily mean excluding the non-theological characteristics, of course.

The original concept of American exceptionalism as understood in the early 1800's didn't imply national superiority in all things. It implied so many other interesting concepts--especially interesting when one considers that many European liberals embraced the reality of American exceptionalism, too--that one would think that would be sufficient enough to offer discussions, inspirations, or even mottos aplenty; but, no--not for today's Religious Right.

For the Religious Right, American exceptionalism is more likely to imply or even definitionally embrace the notion of America as somehow divinely best--not just a new thing in history but something with a divine role in history--that America serves in the political history of the world a role more or less like the role of Jesus in the Religious Right's theological understanding of the world: transformatively perfect, the best, the most powerful, the most humble, and essentially--that is almost in the Platonic sense of essence--aspecial nation with a special role and made real through God's will, (i.e., made actual, i.e., brought into "the course of human events"); and, therefore, to the extent that anything seemingly imperfect occurs within the American narrative, that something is also actually special, because it's happening within a nation specially blessed. It's as if America is under a unique heavenly dispensation. In less academic parlance: the US's shit either doesn't really stink or stinks with a Purpose, in the same way that for a Christian even bad things have a special divine purpose.

What is more, the Religious Right is keen to believe this wholeheartedly and see the understanding itself as special. American exceptionalism means special significance exists relative to anything American--including current events and certainly history--even if it's special significance best understood by or perhaps visible only to those who have the eyes to see it....even if it's superiority veiled in ostensible national imperfection. In other words, the Religious Right's understanding of American excetionalism is really about the Religious Right's own sense of exceptionalism--one, it might be added, that--like many theological assertions--is not falsifiable. They've got America, themselves, you, me, the purpose of history, and the rest of the world completely figured out; or, perhaps, for the proportionally humble among them, at least exceptionally figured out: figued out in a way that's figured out enough--more enougher than the way you've got it figured, anyway! There is no not-knowing--at least no not-knowing that's significant. There's only knowing about important truths in ways or to extents sufficiently superior to everyone else.

The whole Republican mid term election victory was predicated on cashing in on years of Evangelical effort to sell the Right an image of being righteous outsiders.

A host of evangelical/fundamentalist Cassandras tour college campuses reinforcing their followers' perennial chip-on-the-shoulder attitude by telling fearful evangelical/fundamentalist students to hold fast against the secular onslaught. They tell their student listeners (and those students' even more worried parents) to not let "those people" -- professors, members of the Democratic Party, moderates, progressives, and such ordinary American men and women as Jews, gays, and members of the educated "elite" -- strip them of their faith. Hundreds of books by many evangelical/fundamentalist authors could be consolidated into one called How to Get Through College with Your Fundamentalist Faith Intact So You Won't Wind Up Becoming One of Them.

What just happened in this election is that the culturally left-behind hit back.

They won but will still claim they are victims of the "liberal elite." Actually they are victims of bad theology that has tutored them for generations to accept myth for fact.

In a dead heat with Democratic Party candidate Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, Tom Tancredo is the official candidate of the Constitution Party whose platform claims "The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law" and declares, "The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations."

The Constitution Party was founded in the early 1990s by followers of the late theologian R.J. Rushdoony, who advocated the imposition of Christian government based on his own interpretation of "Biblical law." A virulently racist Holocaust-denier, Rushdoony's vision of "Biblical law" included "Biblical" slavery and the stoning, beheading, or burning at the stake, as forms of capital punishment, of adulterers, homosexuals, and women who have intercourse before marriage. Rushdoony also believed that the Sun rotates around the Earth.

Though mainstream media coverage of this aspect has been sparse and shallow, a few alternative press writers such as Alternet's Adele Stan have covered Tom Tancredo's candidacy in the context of the Constitution Party's roots in Rushdoony's movement, called Christian Reconstructionism.

Longtime social justice activist Urvashi Vaid has an exceptionally thoughtful essay at her blog titled "Ideas Needed to Defeat the Right." One needn't agree with every point in order to find it an excellent starting off point for people seeking to approach the subject of what to do. It is long, nuanced and well worth reading and discussing among those who take the long view.